The Waiting Game

Keeps Metropole Coming

by Ric
Erickson

Paris:- Monday, 23. August 1999:- I have been in
the Internet publishing business a long time now and I have
learned over and over again that it is a
'hurry-up-and-wait' affair.

Being in a hurry to be first is hardly worth it when
after you've knocked yourself out doing this, you find you
have to sit around and cool your heels for weeks, months -
years? - before the right combination tumblers click into
place.

I mentioned 'coming changes to Metropole' last week
because I thought these would be happening soon. 'Soon' meaning, within a couple or weeks, or
a few months at most.

Metropole wasn't online for more than fifteen minutes
last Monday before Tim Cissell wrote from Dallas to ask
about the best way to get French films on DVDs - an item I
hoped Metropole would be able to offer to readers.

Digital Video Disks have many good features, but the
entertainment companies have decided that they should not
be sold as an universal standard - like audio
cassettes.

For DVDs the United States is 'Zone 1' and its TV
standard is NTSC. France is 'Zone 2' and its TV
standard is the SECAM system,
but the DVDs in France play on the PAL standard for TVs.
Many TV sets in France are bi-standard SECAM-PAL, and some
will even 'display' NTSC videos if the videorecorder can
read them too.

Japan is also supposed to be a 'Zone 2' country, but its
TV standard is NTSC. A friendly fellow at fnac
explained this to me, while standing in front of racks and
racks of 'Zone1' and 'Zone 2' DVD titles. He also showed me
two brands of DVD players that are bi-standard too.

In a way, the fellow hinted that these DVD exclusive
'zones' are not etched in steel and clever people with
screwdrivers will be 'fixing up' their DVD machines to play
the little plastic disks regardless of the coded
'zone.'

The fact is 'universal standards' makes certain people
uneasy. Rights to distribute films and music are owned,
leased, rented, acquired, on a country-by-country basis and
anything produced on a 'universal' support has a good
chance of finding 'unauthorized' distribution systems,
which may not be paying the dues for the 'rights.'

It's like we are living with a 19th or 20th century
system, just as the Internet comes along to permit the
'universal' distribution system of the 21st century. The
nail of this gets its final hammer with the introduction of
the DVD.

Meanwhile we have our 'universal' Internet that allows
all of us to be connected to each other via a standardized
bundle of wires and machines. This is great, but hasn't it
given all of our national and even local authorities some
terrible frights?

According to many of the newsletters I get, authorities
everywhere are working overtime - it's an industry in
itself - to get the Internet 'under control.' They are
talking about regulations from 'A' to 'Z,' and dreaming of
collecting huge amounts of taxes. It is a bit like the 'tax
wall' that used to surround Paris - collecting its penny
for everything that moved in or out.

That wall fell because it was decided that it was bad
for business - which produced more tax revenue when it was
freer to operate. This is the theory of 'free-trade' and
all the talk we have of 'globalization' today.

It's a good thing it is only theory even if the
newspapers have been able to scare a lot of ordinary people
into being very worried about their personal
prosperity.

Our 'leaders' give it good lip-service, and then let
certain industries create their little cartels, which, if
they don't stifle 'free-trade' they do a darn good job of
making it more expensive for the guy who pays all the bills
in the end - the consumer.

Your are reading Metropole because you are interested In
Paris and I am making Metropole because if I were in your
shoes, I'd read it too. We have a common interest.

I figure that if Metropole can offer bits of 'Paris' for
sale to you, some of you will buy them because of the
common interest and because it can be a less expensive way
of having bits of 'Paris' than flying over here every other
weekend.

Where I have made a serious miscalculation is in my
perception of the Internet. For me, it brings all of you
closer to Paris.

'All of you' are very few Parisians and even fewer
residents of France. 'All of you' are all around the world
- for some months, the statistics say in 85 countries.

Nobody I've talked to since the beginning of this year -
or off and on for the past several years - thinks you are a
potential market.

From your emails I know this is not true. Right now I am
flat out of magic wands and 'presto!' ideas. This
means that you will not be
seeing any exclusive offers for Paris books, posters,
music-CDs, DVDs, beautiful CD-ROMs - in Metropole, soon -
as I suggested as a possibility last week.

Not dead is the coming 'Café Metropole Club.'
This is the idea for having a fixed, weekly meeting place
in Paris for readers in a convenient café. I expect
to announce the startup of the 'Club' in late September,
with the first session taking place then or in early
October. I'm looking forward to seeing you there when you
are in Paris.

The Internet address of Dot-Com will happen, sometime
soon I suppose. When it does, the 'com' will stand for
'comic' - which is what I feel is the result of my
commercial efforts so far.

However the Dot-Com is being tested now and you'll get a
chance to see if it works within a week or two.

You can help with this. Metropole, with all its past
issues online, contains over 1600 pages. Software has been
used to make necessary alterations, but we all know that no
software is perfect. So if you've got the time to do it, I
want you to find as many mistakes as you can, and report
them to me.

I'll think up some appropriate prize for the reader who
rats on the most, as a thankyou for this help.

No 'Au Bistro' This Week - the papers were marked
up and the photos were done, but when I think of the past
week as France's 'dead-zero season,' while the horrible
disaster is happening in Turkey - I am just putting the
column on the spike. Look for next week's news from Paris,
next week.

Metropole's Summer Guide:- appeared in Issue 4.27
in the form of two extra pages in addition to the 'Scene'
column. You can quickly get to these by hitting this link to the issue's home
page, or by taping on All Past
Issues at the top and bottom of most pages in
Metropole.

There is a lot of summer activity at the science and
music park at 'La Villette,' so a list of these was put
into their own 'events' page, called 'A Multi-Theme Park.'

The Fall Season and Paris 2000 - since the
beginning of the year, readers have been hinting that they
intend to be in Paris for the turnover from 1999 to 2000.
The Ville de Paris has not been asleep; its plan is called
'Paris 2000.' It is a fairly modest plan - 'from the
heart' - as it's called. The national program seems equally
low-key and brief details of some of both agendas are in
this week's 'Scene' column.

All of the photos on this page were taken in
the Gobelins area. Read 'A Tapestry Factory' in this
issue.

This Was Metropole One Year Ago:

Issue 3.34/35 - 31. August
1998 - This was an issue done before I went on holiday
to Spain, to tide you over the end of August. The
Café Metropole's subtitle for two weeks was - 'Life
In the Tame Lane.' This issue had two features, entitled
'The Truth About Spain' and 'One 6000
Km Round Trip in Spain.' There were two 'Posters of the
Week' and Ric's Cartoon of the Week was captioned 'Siesta's
End.'

This Was Metropole Two Years Ago:

Issue 2.33/4 - 18. August
1997 - This was also an issue done before I went on
another holiday to Spain, to tide you over the last half of
August. For this reason the Café Metropole's
subtitle for two weeks was - 'The Centre of Midsummer.'
This issue had one feature, entitled 'Sharing a Holiday
with Cows.' There were two 'Posters of the Week' and Ric's
Cartoon of the Week was captioned 'Hot Dogging.'

The
Tour Eiffel Countdown to 31. December 1999:

Only 131 more partly sunny, rarely hot, or occasionally
unsettled Paris and Ile-de-France summer days to go until
the really big year-end party is in full swing.